Newsfeed eclipse
Bad publicity casts its shadow.
Large pop-ups and promoted posts obscure or suppress what we actually want to see on our small screens. In the city of Zurich, concerned teachers kept their pupils in their classrooms during the solar eclipse for safety's sake, because looking at the obscured sun is harmful to the eye. A similar level of care was required from advertisers, because looking at screens obscured by irrelevant brand messages is harmful for the sender and annoying for the viewer. On Facebook, it is easy for users to ban the originators of annoying messages from their newsfeed forever: "Hide all ads from this brand."
So far, the majority of advertising and media specialists seem to care little about this. On the contrary. Instead of class, there is sophistication. Fields for "skipping" pop-ups are getting smaller and better hidden. Just as well hidden as the omniscient cookies and algorithms that anticipate every conceivable need, whether real, guessed or invented, well in advance with a corresponding advertising message. That leaves clickbaiting as the supposedly most creative form of sophistication, which, with teaser messages such as "What happened next moved the world to tears ..." expectations into the unredeemable.
Sophistication is good and is part of the business in a serious form. But without creativity and passion as strong counterparts, advertising on the web and social media degenerates into a disruptive factor. Uli Wiesendanger, TBWA co-founder in a personal interview: "Advertising is more boring today than it used to be." The 80-year-old identifies one reason for this in the way brands are "pandering" to buyers. You don't need to know consumers in detail. This bothers him, as does the firm belief that you have to win buyers as friends via Facebook, which he himself "pushes aside". Wiesendanger is celebrated as a hero in the comments ...
Wiesendanger, who would like to see a bit of scandal, clever argumentation and humor in advertising, brings the growing importance of the regional aspect of advertising into play. He builds a mental bridge between sophistication and creativity. It's about proximity as a goal and targeting as an instrument. Targeting in the sense of sophistication with clever data management: where, when and with what material needs is a target person currently on the move? In our fragmented media landscape, it is no longer possible to find out without the help of intelligent analysis tools. The Swiss painter and graphic artist Hans Erni died on March 21 at the age of 106. Targeting in the sense of creativity requires dedication and devotion. Erni identified completely with Switzerland. As the NZZ wrote in an obituary, he used "his bourgeois realism for achievable goals" in voting posters for the Battle of Cultivation (1942), for women's suffrage (47) and for the introduction of the AHV (54).
His 500-square-metre picture "Switzerland, the vacation land of the peoples" for the 1939 national exhibition is unforgettable. Using a collage technique, he combined tradition and technology, striking a chord with the Swiss people at a difficult time. He was the hero of the "Landi" because he "drew after people's eyes", the NZZ continues. "He created an art that can be understood without knowing anything about art," wrote Hans-Jörg Heusser in 1983.
What you read about Erni now, you should be able to write about advertisers. You don't have to be able to design according to the eyes of an entire nation. But you do need to be able to do so with the eyes of many small groups. Targeting is guidance via sophisticated tools and execution with dedication, care and skill. Targeting is a challenge for us advertisers. Tools help and impact techniques maximize the probability of positive reception. That leaves the content, whose top priority is relevance. The right strategy and a team of enthusiasts ensure order in dynamics and diversity. In the coming articles, I will shed light on these topics. With sunlight, free from darkness ;) - hopefully.
Beat Hürlimann
